EuroNCAP all set to toughen crash tests

Radical changes to the European New Car Assessment Programme are set to take place next year as European Unions leaders threaten carmakers with intervention if voluntary measures to improve vehicle safety cannot be fast-tracked.

Europe’s foremost crash test organisation is currently developing protocols that look set to see both whiplash and speed limiter devices incorporated into the present testing regime. The developments, which will also see changes to the way side impact crash tests are carried out in a bid to ensure vehicles offer even greater occupant protection in the event of a crash, come at a time when vehicle manufacturers are driving forward the fi tment of sophisticated ‘intelligent’ vehicle safety solutions.

However, while carmakers are gradually unveiling a wealth of information and communications technologies designed to both alert drivers to a potential disaster and keep vehicles at a ‘safe’ speed and distance from each other, they face ever-tightening EU deadlines for action. Although manufacturers are under pressure to utilise technology to cut the carnage on roads, the authorities acknowledge that there is a huge consumer safety education programme to be undertaken.

Electronic stability control has, for example, been touted as a massive safety benefit, but in the UK, it is not a standard feature on 40% of cars and surveys suggest that thousands of motorists – including company car drivers and fl eet decision-makers – remain ignorant of its lifesaving attributes (RoadSafe: summer 2007).

Signatories

RoadSafe is one of the signatories to the Europe-wide ‘Choose ESC!’ campaign and director Adrian Walsh said: “Stability control braking is as important as the introduction of the compulsory wearing of seatbelts some 20 years ago.

“The number of cars fi tted with stability control has been increasing in the UK and has now reached 42% of new car registrations, but we are still lagging behind the rest of Europe, in Germany for instance the fi gure is over 80% and in Sweden over 90%.”

RoadSafe is calling on company bosses to ensure that their staff driving company cars choose those fi tted with ESC and Mr Walsh said: “To do so would make an immediate improvement to the safety of employees and would be an indication of a true duty of care.”

Meanwhile, although Euro NCAP says it is unable to develop protocols to test stability control technology fi tted to vehicles, the organisation remains convinced that its standard fitment is vital in cutting road crashes.

It has regularly called for ESC to be fitted as standard to all vehicles and earlier this year compiled data highlighting fi tment rates by manufacturer and by country (RoadSafe: summer 2007).

The European Commission wants to make ESC mandatory on new cars from 2011 and says that if all vehicles were equipped 4,000 lives would be saved annually and 100,000 serious crashes avoided.

The EU described the take-up of ESC as ‘patchy’ and Euro NCAP secretary general Adrian Hobbs said: “We are trying to encourage manufacturers to fit ESC as standard. We cannot differentiate between one system and another so cannot draw up tests. However, there is a problem in the UK among drivers in terms of awareness of ESC and what it can do and that is something that we are working to overcome.”

And David Ward, who heads the FIA Foundation, which is leading the global ‘Make Roads Safe’ campaign, says: “Parallel with the product developments, actions also need to be taken to stimulate demand for road safety. That means more needs to be done to create public awareness of the benefits of preventative and active safety systems.”

Initiatives

Euro NCAP programme leaders are also set to call on vehicle manufacturers to propose their own safety-related initiatives for individual testing and thereby win plaudits for their investment in life-saving technology.

As the behind-the-scenes Euro NCAP developments take place, the raft of vehicles continuing to gain five-star occupant protection continues apace with the new Ford Mondeo, Volkswagen Tiguan, Peugeot 308, Fiat 500 and Kia Cee’d all achieving the top rating (see chart).

The Kia is the first model to achieve the top rating since Euro NCAP started testing the Korean marque’s models four years ago, while Fiat won praise from the crash test organisation for adopting a ‘no compromise’ stance on the safety of small cars as it took over top spot in its segment.

However, while the Mondeo, Tiguan, Cee’d and 308 also achieved four out of five stars for child protection, only the latter scored three stars for pedestrian protection. It is this area that remains a key concern for Euro NCAP with the top four-star rating seemingly unachievable for most carmakers.

Meanwhile, there has been speculation that the expansion of the Euro NCAP crash test regime could see a sixth star added to help fleet decisionmakers, company car drivers and private motorists identify the safest cars on the roads. Mr Hobbs said: “We allocate points for performance. We started with four stars for occupant safety and then moved to five stars and if we add new tests we could increase the number of stars.

“However, we are currently looking at what we might do with our ratings. Nothing is decided and it is possible we will change the present system. “We are constantly evolving and putting further requirements on the car manufacturers. Ideally we would like to bring the new structure in during 2008 but there is still quite a lot of work to do.”

Commenting on the reluctance of many carmakers to incorporate better pedestrian protection in their vehicle designs – only the Citroen C6 has so far achieved the top four-star rating – Mr Hobbs said: “We are always pressing the vehicle manufacturers to do more to improve pedestrian safety but there is a limit to what we can do. There is movement as regards legislation, but some car manufacturers say it is more difficult to improve pedestrian protection than other areas of protection.”

Reducing

The European Union has a long-established aim of reducing the number of people killed on its roads by 50% by 2010, although since that target was established based on 40,000 people killed annually and 1.7 million people injured, the number of countries in the EU has significantly increased. Among its numerous measures focusing on improving road safety are initiatives ranging from new car technologies to common driving-license rules as well as laws being phased in forcing vehicle manufacturers to reduce the number of pedestrians injured as a result of impact with the front bumper, bonnet and windscreen of cars.

Departure

A departure from the laid down crash testing criteria by Euro NCAP is its suggestion that vehicle manufacturers can propose items for assessment with Mr Hobbs saying: “There is all sorts of steps beyond Euro NCAP. We are asking manufacturers to bring forward their technology proposals so we can incorporate them into our protocols and give them some rewards.”

Meanwhile, the EC is continuing to heavily promote the take-up of life-saving technologies as well as investigating how technology can help make cars more environmentally-friendly and ‘smarter’.

It is now in discussions with the European and Asian automotive industry associations in a bid to reach an agreement on offering the pan-European in-vehicle emergency call system (eCall) as a standard option in all new cars from 2010. Viviane Reding, the EU’s Commissioner for the Information Society and Media, said: “Technology can save lives, improve road transport and protect the environment. The EU must spread this good news among consumers and continue to put pressure on stakeholders to ensure Europeans benefit from these winning technologies sooner rather than later.

“If we are serious about saving lives on European roads, then all 27 member states should set a deadline to make eCall and ESC standard equipment in all new cars. If fast progress cannot be made voluntarily, I stand ready to intervene.”

Jacques Barrot, Commissioner for Transport, said: “In our fight to halve the number of road casualties by 2010, we are taking action on all fronts – safer drivers, safer infrastructure and safer vehicles. With this action on intelligent cars, the Commission is pushing to ensure that cuttingedge technology finds its way into our cars as soon as possible where it will help save lives and reduce the environmental impact of transport.”

Apart from eCall and ESC, the EU also wants brake assistance to become a standard feature along with other crash avoidance systems. Sensors giving drivers a half-a-second more warning ahead of a crash, could reduce rear-end collisions by 60%, say supporters.

Increase

In a bid to increase the speedier take-up of safety-related technology the Commission has said that it will produce guidelines on incentives, such as member state tax schemes, for smart car systems by mid-2008.

A total of 24 prototype vehicles and six simulators developed by organisations that have signed up to PReVENT (PReVENTive and Active Safety Applications) – a four-year research project ending in January 2008 that links 54 partners from industry, public and private sectors, automobile manufacturers and suppliers – have recently been displayed.

With a budget of more than €55 million, the PReVENT consortium is 50% EU funded and includes Audi, BMW, DaimlerChrysler, Ford, PSA Peugeot Citroen, Renault, Volvo and Volkswagen among its members.

The manufacturers believe that the standardisation of road safety technologies is ‘extremely important’ and that precompetitive collaborative research is the way to achieve standardisation.

Ford, for example, used the event to preview its ‘path prediction’ technology designed to help vehicles best deploy safety features on frequently driven routes.

Path prediction technology links a satellite navigation system’s historic data on most frequently driven routes with active safety features such as adaptive headlamps, which would be optimally controlled for known journeys’ bends and corners.

Dr Wolfgang Schneider, Ford vice-president for legal, governmental and environmental affairs, said: “The past few decades have seen enormous progress in improving passive safety. However, the most signifi cant improvements in vehicle safety can be expected from the implementation of major new active safety systems, which are those helping drivers to avoid accidents.”

Within the framework of PReVENT, Ford used the event to demonstrate how digital data from navigation systems could be used to support future active safety systems in cars. By using detailed digital map data, the vehicle ‘recognises’ potential hazard areas and prepares itself to react.

Lane keeping systems, which are already fi nding their way into some vehicles, can, in particular, benefi t from the additional information provided by digital map data, says Ford. ‘Path prediction’ uses digital map data from the navigation system and ‘probability calculation’, an on-board computer predicts a vehicle’s route in advance as most people travel the same journeys every day.

An on-board computer could, for example, learn and anticipate the angle of curves on a known route to enable adaptive headlamps to illuminate bends earlier.

Accelerate

The aim of the PReVENT project is to accelerate the deployment on European roads of the next generation of preventive and active safety systems in vehicles using advanced sensor, communication and positioning technologies integrated into on-board systems for driver assistance to reduce road crashes.

The technology will:

Inform the driver as early as possible of a potential crash

Warn if there is no driver reaction to the information, and actively assist or ultimately intervene to avoid an accident or mitigate its consequences.

Help drivers to maintain a safe speed, a safe distance, drive within the lane, avoid overtaking in critical situations, safely pass intersections and avoid crashes with vulnerable road users

Reduce the severity of a crash if it still occurs.

Britain is absent on eCall register

The EC calculates that the technology – an SOS emergency service call-out system – could save 2,500 lives annually when fully deployed in Europe.

The technology is an in-vehicle service that combines GPS location with airbag sensors and mobile phone technology to automatically alert the emergency services to the location of an accident. This could have benefits in reducing the effects of accidents that have occurred through more rapid response.

The eCall system is based on the use of 112 (as an emergency number) and E112 (location information requirements in public wireless networks for emergency calls).

Austria, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Finland, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain Sweden, and Switzerland are the countries – three of them not EU members – that have so far signed the document.

Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for the Information Society and Media, said: “The Commission will soon start negotiations with car manufacturers from Europe, Japan and Korea to equip all new cars in Europe with eCall by 2010.”

With Britain among those countries that have yet to back eCall, the Commissioner said: “Important EU countries are still not responding to eCall. If this does not change quickly, it could endanger the lives of European citizens. I therefore urge the remaining EU countries to join the eCall initiative in the months to come. Otherwise, intervention with an eCall directive is an option that I will seriously take into consideration.”

The Department for Transport has commissioned an in depth study to look at the case for the UK development of eCall.

A DfT spokesman said: “We continue to review the eCall system and the proposed memorandum of understanding. We are in discussion with the EC to obtain further information. No timetable has been set with regards to the signing of the memorandum of understanding by the UK Government.”

Call for mandatory brake assist systems

The law would be extended to apply to new versions of old models about three years later. Cars sold before the law takes effect would be excluded. More than half the new models sold in the European Union already have brake assist technology.

If the complete European car fleet was fi tted with BAS, as many as 1,100 pedestrian lives could be saved annually, according to the EU, which calculates that 8,000 vulnerable road users, pedestrians and cyclists, are killed every year in member states.

BAS cuts the stopping distance of a vehicle in an emergency situation, with the effect that a collision with a pedestrian could be avoided altogether or would occur at least at a far lower speed. The EU says fi tting the technology would increase the cost of a vehicle by about €85. The measure needs the support of governments in the 27-nation EU and the European Parliament.

EU industry commissioner Guenter Verheugen said: “This proposal is good and important for the safety of all road users, especially vulnerable groups like pedestrians and cyclists.”

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